Sipping organic beers seemed like a dream come true. I got to be a beer drinker and a do-gooder at one sitting. The reality of the organic-beer scene turned out to be slightly more complicated.

It is true that organic beers are marginally "greener" than their nonorganic kin.

The grains used in certified organic beers have been grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. However, there is a loophole for the hops used in the brewing process. Organically grown hops are hard to find. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a beer can still legitimately be called organic even if it uses inorganic hops, as long as those hops do not constitute more than 5 percent of the brew.

It is also true that most brewers of organic beers also produce other beers that are not organic. "We are not taking sides," said Alan Newman, who produces both the Magic Hat line of beers and the organic Orlio line. "Just like people buy different kinds of cars, they buy different types of beers," Newman said.

Last October, Newman was in Baltimore passing out samples of his organic beers at the Natural Products Expo. Orlio Common Ale and Black Lager are sold in Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia and should be available in Maryland by the end of 2008, he said.

"There is a growing group of people who for a variety of reasons, some social, some environmental, want to drink beer grown in an organic fashion," Newman said.

The organic beer drinkers also have caught the attention of Hugh Sisson, head of Baltimore's Clipper City Brewing Co. This spring two of his beers, the Oxford Class Amber Ale and the Oxford Raspberry Wheat, will emerge from the Halethorpe brewery bearing the USDA certified organic seal.

It is not a great leap from making craft beers to brewing organic beers, Sisson said. The primary difference is using malts that have not been treated with pesticides, he said. He noted that many of the farms that grow organic crops are small-scale operations, as are many craft brewers. "There is a kinship there," he said.

Organically grown grains cost more than conventionally grown crops, and that, in turn, means that organic beer costs about a dollar or two more a six-pack. But there appears to be a market for them. Even the giant brewer Anheuser-Busch makes two organic beers, called Stone Mill Pale Ale and Wild Hop Lager, although last week I couldn't find them in Baltimore-area liquor stores.

I did find four organic beers, two domestics and two foreign, in local stores.

Taste Extras

How They Ranked Best Brew Wolaver's India Pale Ale Otter Creek Brewing, Middlebury, Vt. $7 a six-pack A copper-colored ale with good malt and a tingling, hop finish. A great tasting beer from a brewery that has been making organic beer for 10 years. Best Bargain Samuel Smith's Organically Produced...